Slow Moments: Week Six.

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi

This past Sunday morning, my first morning in the yurt, I awoke without the aid of an alarm.

Although I wish there were a romantic reason for this – perhaps that I was already falling into a more natural rhythm here on Salt Spring Island – the reality was that sometime during the night, my iPod Touch had died.

Whenever I’m out of the country (i.e. holed up in a yurt in Canada), this little device becomes my substitute for a smartphone. Provided there’s wifi, it’s a way of checking emails without having to drag out my laptop; I’ll save screenshots of maps and bus schedules to it to use on the road; and most importantly, it’s a way of knowing the time.

On Sunday, however, not only had my iPod run out of juice, but when I plugged it into my laptop, it wouldn’t charge. Half an hour later, the lights in my yurt flickered out and we lost electricity. Clearly Salt Spring’s power lines were no match for the snow that had fallen all night and was continuing to fall steadily the next day. It seemed a rather bizarre coincidence for my iPod to go on the fritz at the same time as the power.

I wrote all morning, for once blissfully undistracted by emails and Facebook and the new Coldplay music video, until my laptop died, too.

And from that point on, from approximately 1.30pm, I no longer knew what time it was.

* * *

Time is funny, isn’t it? Laozi called it a “created thing,” Einsten said it’s an illusion. I never quite understood this until Sunday.

I once went on this zip-line course called GoApe. They have them across the US and UK, and what it essentially involves is navigating a series of treetop platforms and walkways while attached to a safety wire. You wear a belt around your waist that functions as a sort of umbilical cord. Every time you come to the end of a crossing, you unclip a couple of carabineers and re-attach them to the next stretch of walkway or zip-line or whatever it may be. You are never not connected to a wire running above your head, keeping you from plummeting to the pine-needle-covered ground of the forest below.

On Sunday afternoon, as I began living without a clock and snow kept swirling from the sky, I realized time is such a wire. It’s what we anchor our days to; it’s what gives us direction and gives life definition.

I have no reason to check the time so often in my life. I work for myself, so it’s not as if there’s a clock to punch into when I sit down at my desk. There’s no one making sure my lunch break lasts no more than half an hour. There’s no boss telling me I’ve worked too long and need to go home at the end of the day.

But still I check the clock incessantly. For one, it’s unavoidable while I’m on my laptop. The time is always there for me to see in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, making it all too easy for me to keep track of how many words I write in an hour, or how long it takes to do a sketch. All day every day, I move through the course of my allotted tasks, clipping and unclipping myself to the wire of time I’ve laid out for the next task.

To be suddenly released from a sense of time on Sunday was nothing short of unsettling. It was strange and disconcerting. Not only was I no longer attached to the wire above my head, but the walkways and platforms beneath my feet had seemingly disappeared, too.

I felt uneasy, directionless, suspended in a weightless sea of snow and ice and air.

* * *

That night, my neighbors invited me over for dinner. We ate leftover Mexican in the glow of a kerosene lamp, and then poured maple syrup straight from Quebec over bowls of fresh snow from their porch. Afterwards, I worked on a puzzle of Noah’s Ark with two of their children, an electric lantern perched beside us on their wicker laundry basket. Their dad Houston, a musician from Granada, sat at the dining room table and played an instrument I’d never heard of before, an African thumb piano called an mbira.

“It’s from the Shona people in Zimbabwe,” his wife Hanna told me.

“I haven’t played this in a year,” Houston said. “It took the electricity going for me to pull it out.”

As he played the mbira and a soft metallic melody filled the air, one of their sons read a story aloud that another son had written. I half-listened as I pieced together pairs of parrots and elephants and tigers, until he got to a part of the story involving a portal.

“A portal is a big circle,” he read out. “If you go into it, it brings you to a different dimension or time. This place cannot be reached by a spaceship – only a portal.”

And I realized then that this little yurt on Salt Spring – which just happens to be shaped like a circle – had been my own portal that day. It had taken me to a dimension I’d never before experienced, not even on remote islands in Polynesia or the Andaman Sea.

A place where time doesn’t exist.

* * *

When I set out on this Slow Moments experiment six weeks ago, I had hoped that I might claim back some awareness in my life – that I would learn to move a little slower through the motions of each day, pausing to appreciate moments of beauty and wonder and connection.

What I hadn’t counted on was the universe handing it to me so explicitly.

On Monday afternoon, a mere 28 hours after the power went out, the lights in my yurt flickered back to life. The first thing I did was check my email, and then Facebook, and then I googled how to fix my iPod. There were plenty of forums written on the subject, and it took but a few minutes to recover the device and have it working again.

The funny thing was – I wasn’t nearly as excited about this as I thought I would be. Now that I could finally keep track of the time again, I found I had little desire to do so.

And so that has become my new challenge here on Salt Spring. I’m determined to look at the time less, to take the awareness that these six weeks have grown in me and that which your stories from around the world have so wonderfully attested to, and make it a part of my everyday life.

Now that I’ve walked through the portal, I plan on staying here. 

Slow moment in Jordan: Anwar

The gate and ticket windows were vacant, absent of the day’s masses. I paced back and forth, trying to both keep warm and to pass the time until the opening hour. Although in Jordan, time doesn’t have the same precision as other places, so it didn’t necessarily mean anything. I knocked on the window and heard a stirring inside and knocked again.  The gate guy tried to convince me to return later (they apparently changed the time they open), but in my steadfastness I was able to convince him to let me in earlier than normal. I was to be the first tourist into Petra that morning.

The light of my headlamp danced off the ground and stone walls as I bounded down the trail towards the Siq and Treasury. I did not know what time sunrise was, so I wanted to make sure to get there with plenty of time. As I rounded the corner in the Siq to the exit for the Treasury, I noticed another flashlight pointing back at me. I was clearly not alone.

As I approached the light, I was as startled as the folks who greeted me. They were Bedouins who lived and worked in Petra, and I was clearly an unexpected guest. They checked my ticket to verify I didn’t sneak in and went on with work while I set up my camera and tripod. I watched as they moved about their morning chores, setting up merchandise and sweeping up trash left behind from the prior day.

As I sat there waiting for the sun to rise, one of the Bedouin men came over, teas in hand and sat next to me. He greeted me and we began to chat as we waited for the day to fully begin. We chatted about life, cultures, living in Petra, living in the USA. There was a store there near the Treasury that they slept behind in the evenings. It’s not a bad life, he told me, waking up to this amazing site every morning. I couldn’t really argue with that.  As it turned out he even had some family in the US. It seems nearly everyone you meet in this part of the world seems to have some family living in Chicago. His brother was there with his family. It was a dream of his to visit them.

We also talked about my time there in Jordan. I practiced my 15 words or so of Arabic on him and he was happy to tell me how terrible I was. Okay maybe in jest a bit, but we talked and laughed as we shared tea and stories beneath the treasury’s shadow.

Sunrise did come, peeking slowly over the walls and I shot a few photos quickly for posterity. If I had to be honest, the sunrise wasn’t that striking. Perhaps it was the winter weather or the high walls of the Siq, but it really didn’t matter. I had been in such a rush to get there when the most memorable moments were the hours I’d spent sitting and talking instead of trying to get that “perfect photo.”

It was a few hours more before our talks were interrupted as the next tourists stumbled through the opening of the Siq. It was time for the work day to start and they needed to get ready for the eventual flood of tourists to follow. I realized I needed to call my friend, see if he’d noticed I had left (which he probably did due to my bull-in-a-china-shop-like stealth). We bid goodbye, I shot off a few last photos and looked to move on with the day myself, too.

Anwar is currently based in the US and blogs at: www.beyondmyfrontdoor.com

Slow moment in Scotland: Oliver

Call me a loner. When it comes to birthdays I tend to seek retreat. I do look for moments, but not the loud ones. I try to get away, keen to get away from it all. The following became my mantra for this special day:

“Once a year, go some place you’ve never been before.” – Dalai Lama

However, it’s more about discovery than distance, more about being than seeing…This year my girlfriend and me settled for “celebrating tranquility” – in the magnificent remoteness of Scotland: Loch Voil. A quiet lake surrounded by mountains plus secluded accommodation on the grounds of a sheep farm. The only gifts I was hoping for were a wonderful stroll through nature and a marvelous outdoor coffee. However, not one of these anytime paper cups, but one with an aroma of wilderness and timelessness.

Snow was hiding the path and a gallery of trees led the way – around us an enchanting interplay between soothing silence, the formidable soundscape of waterfalls and the timid dance of the wind with the treetops. To our right someone seems to have drawn the “wooden curtain,” revealing an unobstructed view of the surroundings. We walk down a wee slope and find ourselves overlooking the serene scenery – only observed by the bewildered gaze of a few sheep.

The sun brushes the snow-covered peaks with glorious light and clouds float like fabulous paper boats on the lake. A furtive breeze takes advantage of the absence of trees and sweeps the grassy hill. The two mugs filled with ground coffee rest on this extraordinary “green carpet” and excitedly wait for the water to boil. Celebrating coffee indeed…

With the exquisite brew in our hands we stand in awe, feeling some wondrous warmth within before even taking the first sip. Our faces reflect the magic of the moment, sparkles of joy dancing in the window to our soul.

Oliver currently lives in Edinburgh and blogs at: www.coffeestainedjournal.com

Slow moment in Utah: Jessica

My mind is often abuzz; it’s rare that it quiets itself even when I am pleading. Life is in never-ending motion especially today with technology and the need to be connected and distracted all the time. I myself come to after hours of being within one black hole or another. Lately, though, I’ve been making more of an effort to look up. To be aware and to seek out the beauty that is all around. There are many ways to become more attune to oneself but my lack of stability often makes it easy to come up with excuses. These past couple of years I have been trying to be mindful and to live mindfully. It’s not always at the forefront of my thoughts but there are moments when I remember to just breathe. To truly be in the present. To let go of the raging thoughts that sometimes seem like they might never cease.

While on my road trip this past fall, traipsing around the western half of the United States, there was so much to be in awe of and I was constantly in awe of my own backyard. I had neglected it for far too long, choosing to gallivant across the seas instead. On this trip however my were eyes opened to the bounty this land has to offer and in that I found great peace. Time seemed to slow as I took in what was before me. Then I walked to the edge of the world. Figuratively. I was quite encapsulated by land hundreds and hundreds of miles from water. Desert. It so very much felt like another world, a dream. How much I might have missed had I not looked up.

We had decided to remain at Dead Horse Point. We had travelled so long to reach the road to nowhere. Now was the time to settle and take it all in. We dared not miss another sunset and the desert at dusk is certainly a sight for sore eyes. There weren’t many left in the park and we simply scattered, each finding a piece of Earth to watch the sun spread its colors across the sky.

I sat with my eyes closed, breathing deeply, opening them to the realization that I could hear nothing. The only sound that of the wind and absolute silence. It was jarring and profoundly beautiful for at that moment my mind quieted to a soft hum as the sun bled into the horizon while the moon rose behind me. The bird of prey swooped steadily through the air, dipping down toward the abyss. It seems odd to be so present within a moment. To watch it all unfold before you. It’s rare I am graced with such tranquility. I hold that moment in time close to me now. When too many things seem to be out of my control, when the world is moving faster than I can keep up with, I remember.

The simple act of being present and letting life slowly roll out from beneath you.

To look up and look out.

To breathe.

Jessica is days away from moving to Korea to teach English and blogs at: http://ladydelusionist.blogspot.com

Thank you for sending in your Slow Moments these last six weeks! I’ve been truly inspired by your stories of reflection and awareness, and have loved the chance to share them here.